Cruising Along Route 3 – West Virginia

After passing through Rhodell, I spent the night in Beckley, West Virginia. That evening I sat drinking a beer alone in a restaurant, thinking about everything I’d seen along the way. Spilling my observations and secrets into my little pink notebook was cathartic.

When taking in so much input all day long, it’s hard to keep track of everything. Little vignettes that feel monumental as they pass are often so touching at the time that it is hard to imagine you could ever forget the details. But, you do. Or at least, I do. As a trip goes on the intake-then-forget process compounds as I absorb more new things and more new things and more…

Each evening during this trip after hanging up my keys for the night, I would start writing a basic outline of the places that I passed through for the day. Just a very loose timeline. From there, tracing my steps I found that I was often able to jog my memory and hang on to little snippets that might’ve otherwise been tucked away in my mental filing cabinet.

Doing memory keeping by hand requires a deliberate concentration and a general slowing down to make the words happen. That slow savoring is something that I never get when typing. It felt good.

The morning that I left Beckley, my plan was just to follow along route 3 to head towards Ohio. I would let the day unfold on its own while passing through coal country.

There is no telling what will move or disturb me along the road. As I’m traveling, raw nerves that I didn’t know were there become exposed. When the layers of day-to-day living fall away and I stop being my get up, kid to school, go to work, dinner, bedtime, repeat, robot-self, I rediscover who I am. My me. My private me.

Something about seeing this tiny shuttered library, overgrown with weeds made me feel like weeping. It felt so symbolic of everything I’d seen in the past few days. It felt like cause and effect all rolled into one.

Passing through Whitesville:

You can see the three-story brick building in the photo below. Everything changes, everything stays the same.


Photo source

Fuzzygalore

Rachael is the whimsical writer behind the 20+ year old Girlie Motorcycle Blog. As a freelance blogger, she is on a mission to inspire laughter, self-examination, curiosity, and human connection. Girlie Motorcycle Blog can be found on several Best Motorcycle Blog lists.

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4 Responses

  1. Ry Austin says:

    I love seeing small town old photos compared with real time–pairing up as many features as possible, noting the changes, and noticing how even towns in the West seem to have paled from their past liveliness…

  2. Deja vu. Beckley is where our family reunions are held. Been awhile since I made the trek. I’ve abandoned my father’s West Virginia ways…

  3. warren says:

    The wife and I are both from WV. She from the center of the state (Grantsville, which is along RT16) and I from near Beckley (Ansted, which is near Rt 16). I have enjoyed your posts about the state of the state. We left 30 years ago (I was in the army) but we travel back a often as possible. It is so sad seeing how bad things have gotten of the years.

    • Fuzzygalore says:

      Hi Warren – I love traveling around WV. So much of what I see and experience there is set apart from the world that I know. Every time I pass through, I get an education.

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